


Like A Paper Airplane

by Charlie9646



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dark, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Illness, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:46:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23761777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charlie9646/pseuds/Charlie9646
Summary: Every dream had a purpose, even nightmares, and he should see this through, whatever it may be.A nightmare and a happy ending.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Severus Snape
Comments: 2
Kudos: 39





	Like A Paper Airplane

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't been able to sleep well for weeks due to the same nightmare, so I twisted it slightly and stuck it in a one shot.

“An open heart will take you far.’

For as long as Severus Snape could remember he had been unhappy, it was like a heavy wool cloak he always wore, downing him in the darkness, it was merely a part of his normal life. Depression was a part of him just like his stupid bloody too large nose for his face, greasy hair, and black eyes. It was something that he had inherited from his mother, as long as he could remember Eileen had struggled to get out of bed most days. His mother struggled to do the most essential things other mothers did. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about him, not by far. The woman just could not seem to pull herself out of the pain that was drowning her. Not even for her son, no matter how much she loved him or claimed that she did.

For whatever reason, he could not understand, and he never would. Hermione Jean Granger loved him. She cared for him like one else ever had. Hermione saw him as someone worthy of love and desire. With all the choices of people she had, Hermione fell in love with him. And for that, he would forever be grateful for. Falling asleep next to the woman of his dreams felt like a fairytale. But, the truth was he was no prince riding in a white horse. No matter what his mother’s maiden name was. 

Severus knew he did not deserve the woman who felt a need to tie herself to him. One day she would wake up and realise that. Severus hoped desperately with every single part of himself that he would be able to endure it once she did. But, surviving was something that he had become quite good at over the years.

Unlike the rest who had survived the war it was not the nightmares of the war Severus was haunted by, but fear of who he was and who he was like. 

Severus opened the door, the rusted handle twisting under his fingers, he knew it must be a dream he hadn’t been back to this place in years—having left it to rot where it stood. Knowing surely that there was a mangled chain link fence was like a snake in the back garden. The overgrown weeds where his mother’s herbs once grew. Gone were his books, his few things which were now in the home he now lived in on the quiet street where the children played, the birds sang, and the street lights always came on, so unlike where he had grown up. It wasn’t like Malfoy Manor with its gates of elegant iron, beautiful lawns, and stupid birds. But for him, for someone like him, it might as well be. The home he shared with her, with  _ his _ Hermione, might as well have been another world compared to this place, the home he had grown up in.

It wasn't a perfect life, but to Severus, it was a life of dreams. Their home was filled with Hermione’s laughter, her snarky comments, and her books. Thoroughly enjoying her sweet kisses and so much more as well. 

Severus saw in her brown eyes the promise of a better tomorrow. A second chance some may call it, but the truth was it was the only chance he had ever had. Part him knew this was all a dream; he could take up if he decided to. But, Severus did not want to. Every dream had a purpose, even nightmares, and he should see this through, whatever it may be. 

What was here now was what had been here in his childhood. The sofa that had once belonged to a woman he had never met, Tobias’s mother, his grandmother. The stained carpet from where his father threw a beer bottle at his mother’s head. The beer having soaked her thin black hair pouring down onto the carpet, because she dared talk back to him.

It was the home that had been filled with Eileen’s cries of  _ don't hurt the boy, don't hurt the boy _ , the booming steps of a man who liked to use his fists to solve his problems. But most of all his own screams, the sounds of his pleading that he had done it—not her, not his mother. Desperate to protect her, even if she did not protect him. 

For as long as Severus could remember, he had believed it was his job to protect her, his  _ duty _ to protect his mother. The woman who had given birth to him, the woman who should have protected him from that monster. Instead, it was her depression, her turmoil that seemed to be her biggest concern. Eileen’s biggest monster to fight was that of her own mind. 

Severus found a dead man sitting on the sofa beer bottle in hand, others crowding around him littered the floor in heaps. It wasn't an unusual sight. Typical from his childhood and it was downright common most nights. When the bar down the street kicked him out, Tobias came home to drink his sorrows away. Eileen found her escape from her demons in bed behind a locked door, pulling the blankets over her head desperate to drown out her pain with more sleep. While, his father found his own at the bottom bottle.

The bottles transformed quickly into rats large grey sewer rats. Piles and piles of them, clawing and scratching at all they could under their claws. They began to eat everything that could get between their grinding crooked yellow teeth. But, all the dead man did was laugh. His booming drunken laughter echoed through the stained walls of Severus’ childhood home. 

With each bite, Tobias became more and more like the rats that surrounded him. Grey fur sprouting from his face and body turning the sickly pale grey pallor of his skin more horrifying. Until he too was a street rat, long yellow claws digging sharply into the remains of the sofa.

But, then the rat that had once been his father spoke with the man’s voice cracking just as the man’s had once done after when he had smoked far too many cigars, ”You think you are so much better than me, don't you? Because you are not. Look at you all alone as you are. No one loves you, and why would they? You, my child, have become just like me. And isn't that such a marvellously wonderful thing? I am alive, you know? Don't you? I am alive, because you and I are one in the same.”

”One in the same, I tell you. I am still alive because I still live in the worst parts of you. The parts you dare not let anyone see, those are what I live in, don't you see? The components of you that you hate. The ones that do not deserve her. That sweet little wife of yours. I wonder what she would say if she knew, I wonder what Hermione would say if she could see what I see when I look at you. The monster within my son runs deep; you cannot hide it forever. He will come out, and all he shall bring to you is ruin. And won't that day be so sweet?”

”Severus!” Someone screamed, maybe Hermione, but her voice was drowned out. ”Severus, it's alright, it's alright it's just a dream. Wake up. I promise you just have to wake up.”

The house began to shake underneath his feet. The walls started to shatter. Wood ripping from the floor, plaster coming off the floor, raining down on both him and the rat. The rat began to cackle like a great beast of a fairytale. The rats once again twisted rearranging themselves into beer bottles, but they too started to multiple. Piles and piles. To the point, Severus could see nothing but the sparkling brown and green glass of them. 

By some unknown force, Severus was thrown out of the house he was falling, falling so far Severus could not even begin to remember when he started to fall. Like Alice, like Alice In Wonderland falling through the rabbit hole into the Underland. Instead of landing though he saw her, his mother. His once beautiful tired mother, looked as she had in her photographs before time had worn her away, before Tobias had worn her down like a piece of sandpaper on wood filing it down bit by bit.

Eileen looked no longer worn and tired from a life that had broken her. From the man who had broken her, Tobias Snape, her husband. She was longer weeping, or covered in bruises. Her face no longer gaunt, and her eyes no longer looked dead. Eileen was far more alive in this moment than she had ever been in life, and fact shattered her son more than anything else ever had.

Dressed in a black robe and a wool black dress, she stood before him. ”Do not dwell in nightmares, my child. Do not live in the hauntings of all you cannot change. Live in the life you have. You are not him. You are not a monster, forget this place and all the pain that it holds. Forget the sorrow it held. To not become him, you must be you. You must be yourself and that my Severus is someone worthy of love. Wake up my child, wake up, return to the land of the living and leave the dead in their eternal sleep.”

“Mother…” Severus cried out pleading for her to do something he was unable to even put into words. Desperate to hold onto the woman who had died before he had graduated from Hogwarts. Severus missed her more than anything he ever had before. His pain at the loss of her was like a wound that had scabbed over, but seeing her once again within the dream was like ripping it open as if it never healed at all. The pain wracked him like blood flowing. 

“Why did you give up mother? Why did you not leave him? You’re a bloody witch, with magic, you could have stood up to him,” he snapped his pain resonating in his tone. “You could have made him stop, we could have been truly happy. If only you would have stood up to him.” 

“Severus I swear it is not as simple as you think it is, he was not always like that, and I swear to you your father did care about you, even if it doesn’t really seem like that now.” Eileen whispered reaching out to brush her pale fingers against his cheek, “But, I know that does not matter to you, my son, and you have every right to feel like you do. You make me proud, at least you do now. You have every right to feel the pain that you do. I am sorry I wasn’t a better mother to you, but I know you will be a good parent, whether or not you believe it now yourself. Wake up Severus, wake up and return to your life. I love you, never forget that.”

Severus fell into his mother’s arms clinging to her like she was a lighthouse, and he was a ship lost at sea. Eileen was his reminder of all that there was, all that he would be and all he could be. Even with all the pain tied to the memories of her. “I forgive you, mum, I forgive you, but never ask me to forgive him. Father was a monster if there had ever been one. More of a monster than the Dark Lord was or at least I felt that when I joined him.”

“I know that, but you must let the pain go, Severus,” she said. “Hatred and pain will only eat you up if you hold onto it. It does nothing to your father. He is dead, just as I am, but you are alive as is your wife and one day soon you will have a child of your own.”

“No I will not, it's not something Hermione and I want. She is so busy with work and I don’t know if I actually want to be one. We have been taking precautions for that not to happen…”

“Sometimes things don’t go exactly as planned, but you have been in this dream far too long, and now it’s time for you to wake up.”

“How do I do that? How do I wake up?’ Severus asked, “Is this a nightmare, a dream, or something else?”

“Is whatever you think it is, how you wake up, is all that you must do is open your eyes. Open your eyes Severus and you shall be home in your bed. But, promise me, that you will first and foremost forgive yourself,” Eileen pulled away, kissed his forehead, brushing his cheek with her fingers. “Forgiving yourself is not forgetting what you have done; it is simply letting yourself move on.”

“I will and I love you, mum.”

“And I love you, Severus.”

Severus Snape opened his eyes, he was home in his bed with a rather worried Hermione next to him. Her brown eyes were filled with worry and pain. 

“You have been screaming for about a half hour, Severus,” she cried. “I kept trying to wake you up, but it was like you were trapped in your own mind. I was about to fire call Remus to see if he knew of some way to wake you up. I thought it was a curse or something. Merlin, I am just happy you are awake and seem okay.”

“It was just a nightmare, Hermione it was just a nightmare,” he pulled her close, burying his nose into her wild curls, breathing in the smell of her. It was like rain, floral and something that was just her. “I dreamed about my parents; I don't even begin to know how to explain it. It was like I was Alice, and I went through the looking glass. Up was down, down was up, and nothing made any sense. Not any sense at all.”

“It was just a dream Severus, just a nightmare. It was not any more real than a book you might one day read to our child.”

“Child?’’ Severus murmured. He was thinking to himself that maybe the dream had some validity to it. As much as it dismayed him, it also brought him solace. He worried that what his father said to him was true, even if the man turned into a monster before his very eyes. But, his mother, on the other hand, said all that he hoped she would say to him, for the most part, while she was still alive. 

“I…I should have told you, I just recently found out myself,” Hermione mumbled. “I know it’s not something that we were playing on, at least not now.” He held onto her even tighter, kissing her cheek, and then her forehead. 

“I don’t blame you, Hermione, not one bit; I will love this child just as I love you. We will make it through this just as we have made it through what has come before, together, as a family. We will figure this out together. I swear it, I promise you, love.” 

“I believe you, Severus, you are going to be a good father, I know it whether you know it or not,” Hermione said to him, clinging to him tightly, together they were a family, a small family, but a family all the same. It felt like it was them against the world, and that was okay. 

_We are one part brave, one part fool,_ Severus thought, _she's brave, and I am the fool._

“Hearts are like paper airplanes; they can hold all your dreams, your desires and your wishes. But sometimes you must allow them to fly; sometimes you must cling to them, and sometimes you must give them to another.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
